Protecting Your Dog’s Paws on the Beach with Snuggy Boots

Living in Texas, our dogs don’t have much experience with the most common reason for wearing dog booties: ice and snow. The ice and snow that can cling to your dog’s paw pads (and form painful balls between his toes) cause many dog lovers to turn to booties every winter. The harmful de-icing chemicals used in many urban areas are another excellent reason to fit your dog with booties.

But summer also brings challenges to your dog’s paws. Hot asphalt and cement keep us from going barefoot in the summer; shouldn’t we protect our dog’s paws just as we protect our own feet?

In the coming weeks, we’ll be bringing you more reasons to protect your dog’s paws this summer but, since we just returned from a quick trip to the coast, we first wanted to introduce you to a real beach hazard: hot sand. The sand reflects and causes sunburn on us (and our dogs–Irie wears sunscreen on the super short hair of her muzzle after last year’s melanoma removal). That sand also becomes very hot to the touch.

For our trip, we tested out the Snuggy Boots Orthotic and Footwear Suspender System. The suspender system, much like men’s suspenders that hold up your pants, is designed to hold up your dog’s booties. If your dog resists booties or tries to remove them, the suspender system keeps them in place.

Honestly, I wasn’t sure how Irie would react. As many of our regular readers know, our dogs don’t do clothing…would this be similar?

First, as I do when introducing our dogs to anything new, I got out the super good treats. In this case, I pulled out the bully sticks. I placed the booties on Irie then gave her a bully stick. Here she is on the couch of our little beach hotel (her sunscreen already on her nose). She instantly focused on the bully stick and ignored the booties:

Step one was a success!

Next, I sized the Snuggy Boots. This suspender system is fully adjustable, both in terms of the length (it clips to your dog’s collar) and height.

When we got to the beach, I put the system on Irie and immediately took off walking to take her mind off the booties and the suspenders.

Along with hot sand, the beach presents many other potential dangers to your dog’s paws including broken glass, metal, broken shells, and even jellyfish, like the Portuguese Man-of-War seen on many Texas beaches:

I was very pleased with how well Irie did with the Snuggy Boots system! You can see more of Irie’s experience with the system in this video from our trip: